Support Your Local Nascent Terrorist?

Support Your Local Nascent Terrorist?

For the past decade or so one word that has been, in ones view, overplayed and yet the finality of it has done so much damage with little understanding of how terrorism, terrorist, those plying for terror and the infliction of it, comes about. There are a whole range of acts that may be indicative of what has taken place as a terror act, this is after the event has occurred but the real identifier is not just with the act itself but confirmed with responsibility being placed upon a named person / body / organisation that has or claims extensive interstate directive control. The terrorist act designation, is primarily fixed onto the multiple deaths or damaged inflicted, yet in some way it accepted that the overall end result of the act is a justification of the terrorism /terrorist tag for the state has unpredictably failed to stop it, for by their very nature all such acts cannot always be prevented. There is of course a great deal of research discovery after the event to identify the construction track back to the creative source, this to assist in laying the evidential blame and help build potential defensive barriers against similar attacks. This is solely a logistics study; the who, what, where and how and if a named disagreeable body can be held accountable there is no reason to analyse the whole supporting historic conception of the terror acts once the ‘organisation’ behind it is named. Unfortunately it is near impossible to suitably defeat or comprehend the act of a lone performer that inflicts deathly mayhem, the accusation of being a terrorist does not easily apply if there is no claimed driving organisational ‘reason’ yet it is still an act of civil terror but it is placed in the divisive characteristic of the unsubscribed society substratum; that of persons in anomic position remote from societal networks or disturbed and subsequently raising collateral destruction. Outbreaks of which appears at odd times and as such, as it is not generally aimed at the state apparatus, it is not officially terrorism.

Just be a little clear here, the definition of terror or terrorism is defined by the powers of state which is given the determinate role in protection and defending from any potentially disabling act against the state. There is a fluid interpretation of this by many countries to attempt diminish the financial and political acts from being deemed terrorism due to the conundrum positions of  ‘my enemy enemies are my friends’. However The UN described terrorism as any act: "intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organisation to do or abstain from doing any acts”. (1) Due to this extracted description and the subsequent acts inflicted on some western countries over the past decade it is probably easy to justify the huge funds that are going in to the futile ‘fight on terrorism’ 

However where manipulative organisations or state promoted destructive acts projected onto another can be labelled as ‘officially’ terrorism and a measure of operational understanding can be discerned behind the act, the neglect of analysing the whole history and influences that elicit a lone performer, should be more seriously examined. One would contend that there are elements in play today that do indeed have an influential role in the rise of disturbed independent actors, that there are pre-emptive causes to acts of unofficial terrorism but in suggesting this is it being too divisive or decidedly unnecessary to raise any questions on this terrorism issue? One only does this as an exercise in taking the terror angle as a means to overlay it with an interpretation that, one might suggest, points to areas of civil order that of themselves are not terror inspired but one may think are a definitive precursor to influential acts of civil terrorism in the future.

It may be stretching one view here but one would suggest that if one considers the ability of mass instant media, unscripted, unbounded and effectively unchallenged there has been a deliberate slide to a much greater expressive use of vitriolic language. This will soon become considerable worse with the development of undetectable audio and visual streaming mimicking precisely a ‘misinformation’ stream that seems to be from a notable person or group platform that are compelled to denies it originated from them. With the now common use of false news, its speed of dissemination, its ready believability by  some consumers and the increase in state funded system intrusions into media outlets; it is undoubtedly dangerous to keep ignoring the increasing potential of the weaponisation of the spoken and written words, soon to be aided by ‘real time images’. The danger of the miss use of aggressive language is over two thousand years old from which conflicts and wars have arisen. Perhaps it will be time soon for democracies to make it compulsory on all media outputs, to placard when such a doppelganger imagery system is used, i.e. ‘this is compiled CGI content’ or proscribe its use by ISP’s or criminalise verified artificial news broadcast (unlikely).    

There is, one suggest, a dangerous shift in the use of unpredictable media and inappropriate language which has an influence on those that may be moved to carry out an act of civil terrorism. This could be counter to the much held belief in the illusive ability of most people to be practical, normal (?), peaceful, educated and have ‘common sense’ to discern promoted disorder . This is no longer a stance that one can rely on. In its simplest formant one cannot ignore the evidence of the fracturing of unified democracies and the rise of ultras or divisive divided alliances as may be seen in the UK, USA, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland etc. In these countries one can see the offensive / weaponisation of language with intent, primarily used by those that are of a political persuasion pressing a direction of dispute. This has also been mirrored in some of their media reporting, or paraphrasing the intent of the content with equal vigour. The issue here is that language used expressively and without any measured sensitivity, on issues of social / cultural stress does have an effect, it may not be immediately obvious but it will be of incremental impact over time. Persuade enough people to succumb to the subliminal intent of a doctrine and at the very least someone will act individually and if it gains a mass substance, it could inevitable submerge any perceived rationality of a nation forcing bizarre acts of cultural modification.  

It may be unwise to extract analogous examples to indicate what one means by the above but terrorist are not just those that are state defined driven by a cause but may also be those that habituate the use of weaponised language to vitriolic express an argument on any media platform. Those that do this could be defined as precursor-terrorist themselves and also they are potentially creating the ambiance to advance (perhaps unwittingly?) a civil terrorist.

Perhaps as a start one might offer a comparable view on the notorious occasion that surrounded the Abu Hanza affair.

Abu Hamza. Hamza was born in Alexandria, Egypt, as Mustafa Kamel Mustafa in1958. In the early 1990s, Hamza lived in Bosnia and fought alongside Bosniak against Serbs and Croats during the Bosnian War. In 1979 he entered Britain on a student visa and his initial reaction to life in Britain was to describe it as "a paradise, where you could do anything you wanted” while studying civil engineering at Brighton Polytechnic. It seems he took up Islam in Malta in 1999. 

Hamza, who has one eye and no hands, once claimed he lost them fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan or from “an accident during experiments in a training camp" or whilst working with explosives with the Pakistani military in Lahore. He was arrested in 1980 for overstaying his tourist visa, allowed to remain and married a British citizen. In 2004 he was arrested under the Terrorism act 2000 which covers the instigation of acts of terrorism but later dropped for a variety of technical issues but in 2006 he was found guilty on eleven charges for soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred and jailed in Britain for seven years for encouraging the killing of non-Muslims, and intent to stir up racial hatred. The UK press nicknamed him "Hook”.

He was kept in jail whilst at the same time the USA pressed for his extradition on terrorism charges over a period of 1998 to 2001 and it was not until 2012 that extradition was granted. He is now in the USA, sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole; he is said to not like it.

His history shows that this man was, while in the UK, an inciting provocateur, a terrorist danger, creating a podium for others to follow and to cause attacks. He was a fierce opponent of the state while at the same time taking advantage of its benefits and although it took 7 years to get him out of the country,  in all this time using every angle to forestall justice using numbers of appeals he continued with his freedom of expression ‘preaching’ on a London street. It was intensely difficult for the home secretary at the time Ms. T. May to deport him and his toxic influence, which may still be at play within extreme Islamic followers today; however her vexation over the whole affair may have led her to create the harsh policy environment for immigration leading to the unfolding of the “Windrush Scandal” This is not to indicate that there is any actual parallel of this policy and the fostering of civic terrorism but the subsequent robust interpretation of the intent has shown and led to a miscarriage or misinterpretation of applicable justice that inflicted the unintended consequences(?) of spectrum anxieties onto vulnerable people.  

Additional to the consequential intimidation / degradation of perceptions and without going into the very complex aftermath of the UK referendum, even though it was a simple binary inexplicit choice at the time; was the perverse influences, amply demonstrated and leading up to the continuing fraught difficulties of it running today. There are too many examples of intimidation to list but are still continuing by individuals and in the media intent on portioning the Brexit battle lines. For media to cast the judiciary as enemies of the state, to denigrate the role of parliamentarians for filling their scrutiny function and viciously malign the democratic tenacity of Ms Gina Miller who fought to challenge the triggering of ‘Article 50’; in which not one MP, political party or notable commercial interest raised any effort to lay a judicial constitutional test too ‘Article 50’ as she did, as a matter of constitutional and democratic process. It cannot be disputed that the expressive, vitriolic language both before the referendum and since has not had direct influence on the ambience of Brexit. That there is no actual terrorism act is apparent but those responsible for promulgating a visionary “a good deal” by “intimidating a population or compelling a government” that cannot by any dint of imaginative elaboration be a position any better than what is currently in force, could eventually be accused of civil terrorism for the damage that may befall the UK economy and social structures.

Now perhaps look at the wholly obnoxious, inflammatory racist, sexist language tone, and violent inferences being projected by Trump onto a range of people, not just on home ground but also the global stage. Anyone that attempts to disagree, challenge or impinge his actions on any aspect of his presidency, is subject to his particular style of official threats and in doing so he has found a disturbingly wide following. One might assume that the US “checks and balances” of administration are robust enough to instruct him on the limitation of power but he is unique, he is, as the president, the Commander in Chief of the military with executive powers and with, despite his peculiar extensive popular support, the USA gun culture and the fervour he seems to inject in to crowds; could one not put it past him not to attack his own government administrative (Congress or House of Representatives) processes and in thinking this the west could well see the USA in him as being a threat to peace by “intimidating a population or compelling a government”

Although responsibility is not directly placed onto him, irascible though he is, there have been acts of consequently civil terrorism however one would be justified in alerting that just like Hanza, the influence of extreme idioms on a restricted probing platform via the public arena does linger and the potential or actual ramification of any form of incitements for manipulative cause should not be ignored.

Incidental to this one might consider the actions the president has taken to obscure any accused dealing leveled at him over connection with Russia and the past election. He sacked, in 2017 James Comey the director of FBI's investigation into the Clinton emails that led onto Russian influences in his 2016 election and possible connected affairs. After the Democrats took the lead in the House this year, he then went about sacking his own appointee Jeff Sessions attorney general (at his JS’s own request?) in November 18, for recusing himself from being involved in the investigations and not ‘protecting’ the presidents from assumed Russian links. And as commented on by Lawrence Douglas, the James J Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought, at Amherst College, Massachusetts; he (Trump) has also turned his angst onto the whole department of justice bureaucracy with responsibility for  the preservation of the rule of law, for in tweets and interviews LD says “the Department of Justice became rebranded the Department of “justice” – the scare quotes signalling an unprecedented attack by the nation’s chief executive on his own administration of justice”. He also goes on to say that the sacking of sessions was to overshadow the democrat victory “while at the same time delivering a threat. Stop me at your own peril. It will be war” (2)

Now, one is known for making analytic assessment of disparate signals that may be just taken as extensive exaggerations, well it is just an opinion after all and one can happily ignore it all or substitute one’s own signals analyses but as a closing point and not that this is clear indicator of facts on the ground other than a sampling pulse of this time, look at the 2018 Doomsday Clock Statement of the Science and Security Board, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:-

“The year just past proved perilous and chaotic, a year in which many of the risks foreshadowed in our last Clock statement came into full relief. In 2017, we saw reckless language in the nuclear realm heat up already dangerous situations and re-learned that minimizing evidence-based assessments regarding climate and other global challenges does not lead to better public policies.

Although the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists focuses on nuclear risk, climate change, and emerging technologies, the nuclear landscape takes center stage in this year’s Clock statement. Major nuclear actors are on the cusp of a new arms race, one that will be very expensive and will increase the likelihood of accidents and misperceptions. Across the globe, nuclear weapons are poised to become more rather than less usable because of nations’ investments in their nuclear arsenals. This is a concern that the Bulletin has been highlighting for some time, but momentum toward this new reality is increasing” (3)

Its conclusion was; “it is now two minutes to midnight”.

This is the closest the clock has been since 1953, after reducing from a wide point of 17 in 1991 and each year since with a variable lessening up to now but interestingly over the period of the Cuban Crisis 1962/3 it stood at 12 minutes.

It would be foolish to overlook the influences that certain individual, placed in key position, operating on a wide public media platforms do not have an impact on the direction that a country moves into and the consequences of unrestricted injudicious influence can lead to calamitous action. Ineffective democracy or dictatorships can and have moved a significant elements of a population to become detrimental to the economic and social health of a nation. Some may have been provoked into irrational actions by the provocateurs whose purpose is to create a power base of unrest for their directive control. In this one might observe; if it is not too eccentric to mention, the (unstable?) state of affairs in the UK, Poland, Turkey, USA, or S. America etc.        

The characters that make a claim to media attention are skilful at appearing to be amusing, dexterously deceptive, disarmingly erudite, contemptuous of truth, a communicating performer and manipulative with popular fears; all to enfold the unwary to accept their direction. Regrettably those that provide an unchallenged platform, may do so on the basis of free speech and maintaining a balance of opinion but there are some opinions that are just too uncontrollable when laid onto an unsophisticated public arena. If there is an inability to factually comprehensively challenge these detrimental characters, nor be effective in assessing for what reason these provocateurs intent to project their views and what they will gain from a manipulation of 'public opinion'; then regrettable all those people that, even unwittingly, are caused to fall under influences, are supporting your local nascent terrorist.

And that may well lead for some, into a direction of irrationality, conflict, impoverishment or war. Perhaps, or none of this can happen, you think?

© Renot

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(1) https://www.unode.org  

      Article 2 of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism of 1999.

(2) Various + Guardian 8.11.18 “Why was Jeff Sessions fired”? 

(3) https://thebulletin.org>doomsday-clock

See    Terrorist – least u forget 12.2007